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Why I Love PC Gaming: Dragon Age Edition
This weekend was all Dragon Age, all the time. It is superb, and probably my personal game of the year for 2009. I can't think of another game that lines up so exactly with what I want out of a fantasy RPG. That said, there are still some issues. Luckily, I'm playing Dragon Age on the correct platform...
Inventory Space
Turns out Joe was right. The sharply limited inventory space is irritating, especially for my poison- and trap-making rogue. All those stupid little items will eventually turn into sweet consumables, but in the meantime I can't loot anything? Garbage. I could scrimp and save to buy backpacks in every town, or BAM! Modded! Sure, I guess I'm technically cheating a little bit, but screw it. In cases like this where the designers made an annoying decision, I feel no guilt in hacking a (single-player) game to be more to my liking.
Paying For Storage?
I'm more than fine with offering Warden's Keep as a bonus adventure for $7; I'm a big proponent of letting players pay for more content in a game they love. Tying the critical storage chest to it is mercenary to the point of being insulting. Modded! I'll probably still buy Warden's Keep eventually, but fixing this stupidity is a point of pride.
Limited Tactics
Okay, seriously, I'm not spending my precious skill points to make your terrible AI system less bad. Sorry. Modded! Thirty tactic slots can help make Alistair slightly less brain-dead, though not any less regular-dead when I forget to kill the enemy mage first. (I have since disabled tactics entirely since Hard mode is hard, but I figured this might be useful info for folks who prefer to use them.)
Shapeshifter Is Terrible
Like really, really bad. As awesome as it is to turn my whirling elemental vortex of destruction into a crappy fighter, I think I'd prefer to keep flinging fireballs and dropping AoE stuns on the swarm of darkspawn attempting to tear Alistair apart. Modded! Morrigan's outfit doesn't get any less ridiculous, but at least she has good skills after taking advantage of the respec mod.
Step 4: Profit!
Stealing is amazing. The unending stacks of Elfroot and Deep Mushrooms are unnecessary, but the cash money and occasional useful item come in very handy. For some reason, BioWare decided to balance the skill's usefulness by giving it a frustrating 10-second cooldown and not telling you what you've stolen. Modded and modded! I can't imagine bothering with Stealing without these mods installed, but it's a great boon with them in.
There's plenty more Dragon Age blogging to come since I'm neck-deep in it and can't stop thinking about how to better build my party, but that's another post. In the meantime, go fix some of the dumber decisions that BioWare made -- and tell me about any awesome mods that I've missed.
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